Maritime Monday for January 9th, 2012

Above, a 1945 Esquire magazine pin-up calendar by Peruvian artist Joaquin Alberto Vargas y ChÃ¡vez, who back then went only by the moniker Varga. We can’t think of a better way to start the year than with a dozen of his paintings…

January 08, 2012 3:32PM — CREW on board a ship carrying phosphate dust had to be rescued this morning, after their vessel is believed to have run aground at Christmas Island in a heavy swell. The vessel is believed to have run aground near a wharf about 7.30am.

A spokeswoman for the Australian Federal Police confirmed that “police on Christmas Island responded to an incident involving a sea cargo vessel that was moored in the phosphate mining dock” this morning.

“The AFP worked with agencies, including the Navy, to rescue the 15 crew members on board the vessel,” the spokesperson said.

“They have been transferred to Christmas Island where they are undergoing health and welfare checks.”

Provenance: Ex Collection of the Younge Family, Puslinch House, Yealmpton,
Devon, England. The House in the ownership of the Family Since 1709
See Finch & Co catalogue no. 13, item no. 59, for a Napoleonic Prisoner of War Model of a 16 Gun Three Masted Merchant Vessel.

One can only be filled with wonder and amazement at the skill, patience, ingenuity and fortitude displayed by the unknown French seamen of the Napoleonic era who produced these accomplished works of art in the most sordid and terrible conditions of the prison hulks with primitive tools and equipment.

Standing and running rigging, planked and pinned hull with open gun ports and cannon. A fine arched, curved and galleried transom and a carved horse figurehead.

Graham Inglis, Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service: “We’re pumping
water from starboard to port to bring Britannia to the vertical”

Royal Yacht Britannia in dry dock after leak

The Royal Yacht Britannia has arrived at a dry dock several hours later than planned after fire crews were called when it started taking on water while being moved.

The yacht, which is now a tourist attraction in Edinburgh, developed a leak in a door seal on Friday which caused it to tilt on its starboard side. It has now been moved to a dry dock across the harbour in Leith for repainting after fire crews pumped water from the vessel.

Nelson’s Column during the Great Smog of 1952: A cold smog descended upon London that today is seen as the worst air pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom. It was responsible for at least 4,000 deaths.

Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s Auction House, stands next to a model of the Titanic, during a press conference and preview of Titanic artifacts on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012 in New York. The complete collection of artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the RMS Titanic will be auctioned by Guernsey’s Auction House in April. (BEBETO MATTHEWS / AP)

The sale of more than 5,000 artifacts salvaged from the world’s most famous shipwreck is causing concerns for a local museum official.

Concerns serious enough the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic will never consider hosting the Titanic relics — even as a temporary exhibit.

“No maritime museum in the world that is part of the (International Congress of Maritime Museums) would display any of these items,” the museum’s registrar Lynn-Marie Richard said in a recent interview.

When word got around that scientists nicknamed a particularly hairy-chested kind of deep-sea crab after “Baywatch” star David Hasselhoff, “The Hoff” didn’t get huffy. Instead, he proudly tweeted the news to his 358,000 Twitter followers. The Southern Ocean’s “Hoff crabs” are just the latest critters to get celebrity nicknames.

“WIll inventive genius evolve an ocean liner that can defy all the elements which now threaten voyagers? Judge’s artist here pictures the Aerotania, an imaginative vessel, which, at its helmsman’s will, can even mount into the air and clear icebergs.”

Loading Rice for Export – The steamer Sheppy Allison is seen loading rice in New Orleans in this postcard view. She was built in 1899 by Wm. Gray & Co. LTD, West Hartlepool, England. She was 302 feet long with a 43 foot beam, and a displacement of 2,285 GT. In 1912 she was renamed “Ramon,” a name she held until being scrapped in 1936. FULL SIZE

In Saint-Nazaire – A view of various ships at the piers in the harbor of Saint-Nazaire, France. The only one of which I am able to identify is the ship in the foreground, “Reindeer,” and even at that point, I just have a name, no details. (Posted by By Fairlane221)

…Up on the plateau between the two rivers, woodsmen had been felling trees, barefoot as usual, and one of them had been bitten by a snake. Snakes had never been seen anywhere near chain saws, because the noise and the exhaust fumes drive the snakes deep into the jungle, but this man had suddenly been bitten twice in the foot. He had dropped his chain saw and just caught a glimpse of the snake before it disappeared into the underbrush; it was a chuchupe. Usually this snake’s bite causes cardiac arrest and stops breathing in less than a minute, and cases in which a person has survived a bite longer than seven or eight minutes without treatment are almost unknown. Our camp with the doctor and the antivenom serum was twenty minutes away. The man, so I was told by someone who had been working next to him, had stood motionless for a few seconds, thinking hard. Then he had picked up the chain saw, which had stalled when it hit the ground, pulled the cord to start it, the way you pull an outboard motor, and had sawn off his foot above the ankle…

from Conquest of the Useless, based on the diary Werner Herzog kept whilst making Fitzcarraldo, the 1982 movie about a rubber baron obsessed with transporting his steamship over an isthmus between two rivers to access untapped territory.

The Guardian – Amphioxus, seen as representative of first animals to evolve a backbone, among 15 marine species discovered this year. A brainless and faceless “fish” was one of 15 species discovered during a series of Scottish marine surveys this year.

The prehistoric amphioxus, was found in waters off Tankerness in Orkney. It has a nerve cord down its back and is said to be regarded as a representative of the first animals to evolve a backbone…

Cruise History: The RMS Viceroy of India was an ocean liner that was owned and operated by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company Ltd. of Great Britain. During World War II she was converted to and used as a troopship. The Viceroy of India was sunk in November of 1942 by German U-boat U-407. Her service was succeeded by SS Chusan from 1950 to 1978. — CruisingThePast.com

The P. and O. was widely considered the premier shipping line for transportation to India (“a junior branch of the Royal Navy,” according to some). The little guidebook provided for passengers (first published in 1888) included information on ports of call, essays on countries served, advice for travellers, maps, and meteorological tables.

Technology may have improved, but large ships have always needed large propellers. This is from the SS Great Britain, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the world’s largest vessel when it was launched in 1843. The ship crossed the Atlantic in 1845 in only 14 days, a record at the time.

SS Great Britain fitting out alongside Gasworks quay in Bristol Floating Harbour (not Cumberland Basin), April 1844. This photograph of Great Britain taken by pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot is not only the first taken of Great Britain, but also believed to be the first photograph ever taken of a ship. Date: April 1844

SS Great Britain, showing the ‘false sea’ that effectively seals the lower hull from the air

By 1998, an extensive survey discovered that the hull was continuing to corrode in the humid atmosphere of the dock and estimates gave her 20 years before she corroded away. Extensive conservation work began which culminated in the installation of a glass plate across the dry dock at the level of her water line, with two dehumidifiers, keeping the space beneath at 22% relative humidity, sufficiently dry to preserve the surviving material of the hull. The engineers Fenton Holloway won the IStructE Award for Heritage Buildings in 2006 for the restoration of the SS Great Britain. In May of that year the ship won the prestigious Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries wikipedia

August 6, 1914: first U-boat battle in the Atlantic, WW1

U-118 – Following surrender U-118 was to be transferred to France where it would be broken up for scrap. However, in the early hours of 15 April 1919, while it was being towed through the English Channel towards Scapa Flow, its dragging hawser broke off in a storm. The ship ran aground on the beach at Hastings in Sussex at approximately 12:45am, directly in front of the Queens Hotel. (via thingsihappentolike)

One of the 2,751 Liberty Ships built during WWII. One of these, the SS John Harvey, sunk and
caused a terrible disaster, but it was one which led to a major medical breakthrough.

1943 – A Luftwaffe bombing raid on the harbour of Bari, Italy, sank numerous cargo and transport ships. Included in these was an American Liberty ship, theSS John Harvey, with a stockpile of World War I era mustard gas aboard. The bombing caused the single (and unintentional) release of chemical weapons in the course of the war by the Allies.

The John Harvey was built at the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her Maritime Commission Hull Number was 0878 and she was rated as capable of carrying 504 soldiers.

On December 2nd Bari was struck by a major German air raid (so big that it shut down the port for more than two months; sixteen ships were sunk and it was dubbed “Little Pearl Harbor” at the time). The John Harvey was not hit, but it was showered with flaming debris, caught fire and blew up. Its cargo was unleashed on its crew and the defenseless town…

1950: Most of the Soviet Air Force ice hockey team is killed in the Sverdlovsk air disaster when their DC-3 crashes on approach during a severe snowstorm. The Air Force and Vasiliy Stalin hide the accident from Joseph Stalin.

1975: The bulk carrier Lake Illawarra, unable to reverse in time, crashes into the pylons of the Tasman Bridge in Hobart, causing a section of the bridge to collapse. 7 sailors drown and 5 motorists are killed.